


Sleep

by AssyEr



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Literal Sleeping Together, Sleep Deprivation, Sleepovers, Sleepy Cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:55:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28300488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AssyEr/pseuds/AssyEr
Summary: Jonny knows that something bad is going to happen.He does,thank you very much. So he stays awake for weeks to make sure his crew is alright, which goes as well as you can expect.
Relationships: Drumbot Brian & Jonny d'Ville, Jonny d'Ville & Nastya Rasputina
Comments: 11
Kudos: 78





	Sleep

**Author's Note:**

  * For [schrijverr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/schrijverr/gifts).



> Gift fic exchange for Christmas! I'm posting this my christmas time, which means forbidden extra hours >:3. Hope this does your prompt justice! Happy holidays, mean bastard (yes I saw the notes on your fic yes I'm gonna stab you on your sleep from the comfort of a sofa)

Dinner in the Aurora, like all dinners that consisted of a large group of immortal criminals, was, to say it mildly, chaotic. The food wasn’t served yet, so most of the crew that wasn’t helping Brian in the kitchen (or was banned from there) were chatting, moving, killing, and in general being noisy.

Brian and TS were serving the food from the pans to the plates. Ivy was one of the group that wasn’t allowed there while Brian was doing the cooking, but that didn’t stop her from trying to provoke the drumbot from the other side of the door. So far, he had managed to ignore her.

Brian and Tim were discussing something on the table about Tim’s new gun he had managed to get the last time they were planetside. Behind them, and a little more away from the table so they wouldn’t get in trouble with the pilot, Raphaella was showing Ashe the new way she had discovered of exploding stuff, and casually asking them how many supplies they had to theoretically repair her laboratory from, perhaps, cero.

Nastya had brought some weird metal thing to repair, covered in oil so she was also making a mess of the table. On her left was Jonny, fidgeting with his harmonica, and for the first time anyone could remember, quiet.

He was trying not to fall asleep, see. It wasn’t for a bet, surprisingly, but out of his own anxiety. There had been… things, happening in the ship. Things like him fucking up when rehearsing their presentations for a show, or Marius not making enough muffins for everyone, or Aurora’s senses failing to detect the whole crew.

There was something wrong, he knew it. Marius was an idiot, and he not being able to do basic math was by no means something new, but Aurora’s sensors? Nastya had turned the ship upside down trying to find the focus of the failure, to no result. And he himself had done that introduction a hundred times to be forgetting how it went now.

And it didn’t stop there. Things felt… different, bad. Like an accident waiting to happen.

It was the Narrative, he knew it. The rest of the crew would probably tell him he was paranoid, but Jonny knew very well at this point in his life that it wasn’t paranoia if you were right.

Worst case scenario, it had something bad planned for one of them. Best case didn’t matter.

So Jonny had been avoiding sleep for a couple of days now, wanting to be ready when it happened, whatever it was. It was his duty to protect the rest. He just hoped his mechanism would allow him to remain awake until then.

He didn’t notice when the rest sat down on the table, or when TS started to pass the food, until Nastya’s voice rang besides him. “Brian! You are one plate short!”

Jonny was on the kitchen, trying to make something edible. It turns out that after weeks of no sleeping, and getting many shoes were thrown at you in an effort to make you shut up, you ended pretty hungry.

And the worst part was that it hadn’t been Jonny’s fault, really. He had been walking around the corridors, making sure everybody was alright. Tim’s had been the last room he’d checked, finding the man sleeping like a space log. He hadn’t taken it kindly to being awaked by the first mate (not that Jonny had intended so, really, it was his fault if he got easily woken up by the bang of a metal door being stomped wide open).

That’s when he got his first boot thrown at his face. After throwing Tim his boot back, he decided it wasn’t worth it, and left the room.

But Tim sleeping on his bed had seemed so comfy, and Jonny could feel the lack of sleep weighting on him. He couldn’t afford to go to sleep, tough. He needed to stay awake, to make sure everyone was alright. That’s why he decided to start playing the harmonica at three am. Climbing one of the ceiling’s pipe right outside the gunner’s bedroom was just an afterthought. At least if he fell asleep, the hit of falling to the floor was sure to wake him up. He hoped.

After only a few seconds of playing his new improvised song (that was definitely not the same note played as loud as he could with small pauses in the middle) he got another of Tim’s shoes thrown at him, this time with a loud “shut the fuck up!” to go with it.

Jonny, understandably, had no other option but to throw Tim his own boot. And when the bastard unjustly attacked him again, he threw his other one. And then his third one. But one particular stiletto on the leg reminded Jonny that he, unlike Tim, was limited to the three shoes he had been carrying on him, and he had already used those.

So he tried to climb down, which ended on him falling and breaking half of his fingers, of fucking course. After that he decided to make himself a sandwich.

They were out of bread, apparently. And cheese, and pretty much everything that you could make a sandwich out of. And Jonny was really looking, with half his body inside the refrigerator.

“I’m not giving you your shoes back”

Jonny hit his head against the top of the fridge.

Tim laughed behind him at his surprise, looking incredibly smug when the first mate turned to see. Marius too was beside him, tough his expression was more on the side of concern.

“The fuck do you want?” d’Ville asked them, rubbing his head with a hand.

Marius opened his mouth to say something, but Tim cut it. “You’re not okay, so I brought him to see if he could get some sense into you” he told him, arms crossed.

He did that, uh, Jonny tough. Not much of a surprise. They surely tough that he was being his stupid self again, refusing help for the sake of it. The stupid first mate at it again, just because they couldn’t see, didn’t want to see what was happening. He just wanted to take care of them, and they didn’t let him.

“Isn’t that rich of you” Jonny mocked.

And so they came here, wanting to, wanting to…

“Jonny, we’re just worried” Marius started. “You haven’t been sleeping, and-”

…and cornering him, because god forbid he ever had any decent idea. They didn’t trust him, that’s what it all boiled down to. Not accepting him as captain, not understanding he knew something bad would happen, and definitely not trusting him to protect them.

Well, that was fucking fine for him. He didn’t need them to like him, just to stay the fuck alive.

And you know what? If they were going to be pricks about it, he would be an even bigger one.

Marius was still talking, oblivious to Jonny’s train of thought. “…please talk to us, I-” he asked, before a bullet cut his words.

Jonny lowered his gun, holstering.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” Tim accused him, words full of anger. Jonny could see his finger twitching to reach his pistol.

If that’s how he wanted to play. The first mate raised his gun towards the other. “Really? You can’t?”

There was a moment of stillness between the two, in which Jonny was sure the other would shoot first. But he ended up lowering his weapon, much to his surprise.

“Not worth it” Tim scoffed at him, before turning back and going away.

“Fine,” Jonny said to the empty room.

“They’re just so-” Jonny muttered under his breath, while passing through one of Aurora’s corridors. “Who needs them anyway, ‘s not like they’re of any use. Should just-” He groaned, going back to his pacing.

The only thing they had done was complaining about him all along. Why aren’t you sleeping, Jonny. Why are you in my room at three am, Jonny. Shut the fuck up, Jonny. They didn’t understand, that’s what was wrong with them. Not knowing anything, especially Ivy. Yeah, Marius wanting to do his freaky mind stuff, and Tim just stopped shooting at him! Yes, Ashes were the worst.

Because they didn’t know, didn’t understand. He had to keep an eye on everyone, and make sure they were alright, because they couldn’t see what was right in front of them, so he had to look after them.

He needed to make sure they-

The Toy Soldier!

Where was it? He couldn’t see it, and anything could be happening to it. He needed to make sure it was safe, assure that the Narrative-

No, he had seen it. Jonny had just been on its room, checking up on it. TS had been sitting on its bed, giving its mustache a new layer of paint. It had asked him if it could do anything for him, and he had told it to fuck off. He remembered that.

He did.

And then… And then he had checked on Tim, even tough Jonny knew Tim was still angry with him, but before them both he had gone to… to… Raphaella’s lab, that’s right, to Raphaella’s lab, and she too had been alright.

But he hadn’t seen Brian since dinner.

Jonny stopped dead on his track. He hadn’t checked on Brian since dinner, and, and he didn’t know where he was. He could be anywhere, the Aurora was a freaking big ship.

He needed to think. Had Brian seem angry at him during dinner? Maybe he was evading him, maybe he had been angry with him all along and he finally snapped. He always complained about them, groaning about the time they had left him on the sun…

They… they had done that. Yes, one could argue that it had been rather difficult to get back to that weird sun without a fucking pilot, but he was still bitter about it. Jonny thought. Brian always brought it out, and they always dismissed him, why did they do that?

Where was Brian?

He needed to make sure he was alright, to find him, to…

Jonny heard the hiss of a snake below him.

His soul jumped out of his body and fell right inside it once again. He hadn’t heard one of those noodles of the devil since he left New Texas, but he had his fear integrated too well into his mind to forget. But when he looked down, there was nothing there.

There was nothing there.

He had heard it, tough. He heard it, but…

And there was it again, from the other side of the room. That sound, and this time he didn’t bother to look for the animal. He took his pistol and shoot right where the hiss came from, one, two three times.

There was nothing there, again, except for the dented metal of the floor.

It… That was fine. Nothing to worry about. He could now go back to, to, to what he had been doing. Before the hissing.

The thing, the one he did definitely remembered.

“Jonny? What are you doing?” Nastya asked behind him.

Jonny turned around, effectively spotting her. “Nastya?” he said, confused. “You… I checked on you before, before checking on Raph, and you were sleeping with Aurora”

He was sure of that.

He thinks. Probably.

“I’m worried about you” she told him. Nastya took a step towards him, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“You shouldn’t be,” he replied, too confused to do anything about the hand that would normally annoy him. He decided not to think about how he couldn’t feel its weight on him. “I… I need to do. Some, things, I…”

She tilted her head. “Look for Brian?”

“Yes!” Jonny exclaimed, happy to finally remember. “Do you know where he is?”

Nastya shook her head.

“Oh. That’s, fine I guess. I, will go now to see if I can find him”

Brian was the pilot, and everybody knew where the pilot seat was. It seemed like the most logical place to start. He could do that.

Jonny turned around, starting to run towards the direction of the bridge, when a sudden tough came to him.

“Where-?” He tried to ask Nastya, but she was gone.

That… didn’t seem right. She had been there a second ago. He had talked to her. Nastya had put a hand on his shoulder, and…

He took his hand there, where she had laid hers. Or he thought she had. What time was it?

Jonny needed to do something, before it was too late. He was about to do it, he remembered, and Nastya had told him… But where was she?

No, that didn’t matter.

He had been about to do something important. Very important.

He couldn’t remember, tough-

“You need to see Brian,” said an octokitten, oozing right where Nastya had been standing. “He’s probably in the bridge”

Jonny blinked. The octokitten, a blue-ish creature was no different from the rest of the swarm that he often found, except for the big, humanoid eyes that seemed to look through his soul. And the talking, of course.

“That doesn’t matter,” the animal told him. “Go look for Brian”

He nodded. That seemed about right.

“Look for Brian” he repeated under his breath, as not to forget. “Look for Brian” He left it without a second thought, not worried about it disappearing or staying. He had a mission, now.

He needed to make sure Brian was alright.

Jonny enters the bridge with his pistol in hand, devoided of bullets for about five corridors, not that he had noticed. Aurora had opened the door for him, and he stood frozen there for a moment, before remembering where, and more important, why he was in the room.

“Jonny?” asks Brian, noticing the man. He had been sitting on the pilot chair, as expected, playing the banjo and generally vibing with the spiders that had taken him as their personal resting place. “You look terrible”

And he was very right. Jonny had lost both of his boots (and one more?) somewhere, throwing them to someone at some point, for something he didn’t remember. He thinks. His vest had disappeared, who knows where, and so had his googles. The makeup that usually decorated his face, tidy on its disastrous but impeccable strokes, were smeared all around the top half of his face, darkening even more the circles around his eyes.

The look certainly enhanced those, the drumbot thought. They were red for the lack of sleep and the small bloodshot stains, which made him look even more like the devil he claimed to be.

“Brian” Jonny told him instead. He tried to frame it as a question, but he was way too tired to say it any louder than a whisper, let alone add an intonation.

Then, as if remembering something, he suddenly stirs right up, eyes wide, and mouth open in urgency. “Brian!” He quickly crosses the room in a sprint, and stands right above Brian before he has any chance to get up.

“Brian” he repeats again, this time more calmly. He lays both hands over the pilot’s shoulder, and Brian notice their trembling.

“That’s me,” he replies, now more concerned. Brian grabs him by his sides in an attempt to steady the other, but it backfires as Jonny’s legs finally give up, and he ends falling on his lap.

Not that the first mate seems to have noticed. “Are you here?” his crazy eyes doesn’t leave Brian’s, not even to blink.

It’s at this point Brian realizes how _really_ not okay Jonny is. “Of course I am, Jonny. I’m here, and so are you, why wouldn’t we be?”

That seemed to calm Jonny, at least. He lets out a sigh, finally relaxing. He moves his legs, who had been trapped under him, to fall to the side, and Brian doesn’t misses the way he uses his metal body to support himself. The first mate doesn’t lay his head on his shoulder, tough he looks like he would love nothing more, instead focusing on making eye contact.

“You… you might not have been. You were angry with me, with us… I’m sorry, I am, I’m sorry” he starts by mumbling, but then goes to fully, incoherent nonsense with a croaky voice, and Brian has no clue about what he is talking about.

Well. Kind of. There are more than enough reasons Jonny owes him an apology, but he had never been like that about anything he had done, and what did he mean by angry? He wasn’t angry with him, not really. He did playfully pretend to be so, but he was sure Jonny knew it was just a game.

“Hey, no, Jonny, it’s alright. I forgive you,” he started to assure him, circling an arm around him and petting his hair with the other. Brian didn’t know what he was talking about, but he had already forgiven him. How couldn’t he? Jonny was trying to hold a sob. “I’m not angry with you, I forgive you. It’s alright,” he kept telling him.

A small whine tried to get out from the first mate’s throat. “We left you for a century”

So that’s what it was about, Brian thought. It had been so long ago, maybe a thousand years. There wasn’t any grudge from him, not since Aurora explained to him that they had tried.

But apparently it wasn’t as clear to him. “I know, I know. But it’s fine, Jonny, I promise you. Aurora told me that you all tried to get back as soon as possible. Piloting doesn’t seem as easy now, does it?” he tried to go with a joke. “The spiders aren’t that easy to talk to.”

Upon hearing their name, one of the creatures peeked from Jonny’s shoulder, curious. Brian petted and carefully removed it from there, leaving it instead on top of some controls. He knew theirs and Jonny’s relationship was… complicated.

Jonny, oblivious to the events, laughed a bit. His voice was dry, and his throat hurt, but it was still a laugh. A rest from worrying.

Brian was there, safe, in front of him.

They were all safe.

For now, at least.

“Please, stay?” Jonny asked him, not sure what he himself meant. Stay were? In the ship? In the chair? Near him?

The drumbot didn’t seem to care much about those questions, tough. “Of course,” he answered him, rubbing his back. An offer of comfort.

That’s when Jonny noticed he was shivering, and that Brian’s brass was pretty warm. He allowed himself to fully rest on him, head on his shoulder. Brian was safe, and he promised to say, he repeated in his mind, so this was alright. He could rest a little.

He wasn’t going to sleep, tough.

Apparently he had said that out loud, because Brian shifted (slowly as to not disturb him) to see his face. “Why not?” the pilot asked, raising his hand to pet Jonny’s hair in calm, predictable motions.

The bastard. Jonny closed his eyes to enjoy the feeling, definitely not letting out a small moan. He was trying to get him sleepy. Jokes on him, it would not work.

“The Narrative, it-” he cut himself to yaw. “It’s doing stuff. I can feel it, and it, it will take one of us, I know”

Brian’s hand stopped for a moment at his words, but returned moved after Jonny head-butted it. “Jonny,” the drumbot told him after a while, his voice soft. “You can’t fight the universe,” he reminded him.

Jonny scoffed at him, wrinkling his nose. “I can try”

He felt the vibrations below him before he heard the short laugh the drumbot let out at that. “Believe me, I know”

The hand on his hair moved to his face, taunting the top of Jonny’s eyes. He finally relented, opening them to look at the other. He looked… worried.

The first mate realized then that he didn’t know in what setting Brian was. He could kill him, or knock him out if he pleased, if he thought it would be for the better good. If he really wanted Jonny to sleep. And he was sure that it would take a while for his body to come back, by how he had been treating it.

He didn’t feel afraid, tough. Maybe he just didn’t have the energy to do so. “I can’t sleep, Brian. I need to make sure you’re all safe. Please.” He didn’t care if it was begging.

He needed to stay awake.

Brian made an expression that Jonny didn’t know how to read, nor did he really tried to. He just closed his eyes again, content with laying on top of Brian.

The pilot was safe, so was the rest of his crew, and he had a moment for himself to rest before going back to check on them. Whatever happened, he would burn that bridge when he came to it.

“Jonny?” Brian nudged him to open his eyes. “I need you to see something, please.” When he finally agreed, the drumbot pointed at a screen on the controls right in front of them. If Jonny had to guess, he would say it was a map of the starship, tough he didn’t know what all the dots represented. “This is a live, life-scanning of the Aurora. It lets me know where everybody is, and whether they’re alive or dead”

Jonny hummed. That made sense. Besides every point there was a small label, but in cyberian. He looked at Brian, trying to ask for what he meant. “I can make sure everybody is alright, while you sleep,” he explained.

That… was rather clever. And not Brian’s job. He was the pilot, Jonny was the captain. It was very convenient, and a lot easier, to be able to check on everyone from here, but in the end it was still his duty.

“I’m the captain,” Jonny complained. “’S my job.”

“I know, but you’re tired”. Brian realized he was about to talk again, and he cut it. “Listen. If you can play to be the captain, then I can play to be the first mate here. Just, delegate it on me while you rest, how does that sound?”

To be honest, it did sound logical, at least to Jonny’s sleep deprived brain, and he _really_ wanted a rest. Giving Brian some attempt of an agreeing noise, he curled even more on top of him, closing his eyes and falling asleep on the instant.

Brian did his best not chuckling as not to disturb him. He had expected the first mate to get up and go to his bed, but this worked, too. At least this way he could make sure Jonny got the sleep he desperately needed, and, Brian wouldn’t admit under threat of death, his weight felt really good on top of him. Grounding even, comforting if he went for a deeper explanation.

He saw by the corner of his eye a few spiders doing their best to drag his, in comparison, enormous coat to him, and extended the hand that wasn’t holding Jonny to grab it. Putting it over the first mate for him to use as a blanket, he smiled at the lovely sight he made.

With a lightness that could only be metallic, he kissed the top of Jonny’s head. He groaned a little, probably more of habit than anything, but otherwise didn’t stir.

Brian looked back at the screen. If everything went right, it would be a long night for him.

The room was quiet, at least until Ashes stomped in with Jonny’s corpse. The rest of the crew looked up for a moment, not particular surprised at the sight, before going back to what they were doing. In most cases, it was continuing arranging mattress and pillows to fit together. In Marius’, to continue eating the snacks that most had agreed to leave for later but Raphaella had left unsupervised, and so he had taken his chance.

“Mind The Blood!” chimed in the Toy Soldier, who had just finished cleaning the consequences of the last ‘incident’, and really didn’t want to pick the sponge again.

Ashes yeeted Jonny’s body on top of the nearest mattress. “Don’t worry, TS, I just broke his neck, no blood to clean”

It was at this point that Jonny started to stir, slowly coming back to life. “…the fuck?” he mumbled, looking around him. “What is this?”

The room, one of Aurora’s that hadn’t been given any use besides providing a nap room for the octokittens, had its floor covered completely on mattress, pillows, and the rest of the mechanisms were busy on adding blankets to the list. On one corner a crate had been given use as a table, where someone had put snacks and bottles. Next to it was Marius, who was still discretely lowering the numbers of the former.

“Slumber party!” Raphaella exclaimed, excited.

It took Jonny a moment to get out of his shock and search for Brian. All this couldn’t be a coincidence, he knew. He had thought that he had been safe with trusting the pilot, the other night, but if _he_ had planned this, if he had gone and told the rest behind his back, then it had been obviously the wrong choice.

He didn’t need the others to pity him.

Jonny saw him, kneeling on some mattress, arms full of pillows. He actually smiled at him, waving with one of his hands. The fucker. Jonny stood up to go show him what he thought of it.

But before he could fully stand someone pushed him from behind, making him fall on a pile of blankets. “Leave him alone” Tim told him, when Jonny looked to see who had done it. “I don’t know what’s up with you and sleep, but you’re doing this”

D’Ville got up, never one to let down a fight. He would show him what he would be doing.

Ashes put their hand on Tim’s shoulder, holding him down. “Stop it, both of you. I didn’t tell him yet what this is about” They looked at the pair cautionesly, and didn’t let go of Tim until they were sure it would be alright.

Brian walked towards them, pillows long forgotten. Jonny looked at him. “What is it, then?” he asked through his teeth.

The drumbot gave him a timid smile. “I’ve been having bad dreams, well. They might be prophesies. I’m not sure, tough. But I could really use the comfort”

Jonny blinked. He didn’t need to be a genius to know that was bullshit. But it was. Good bullshit. Clever, even, for the drumbot’s plan. He hadn’t betrayed him. God, of course he hadn’t. It was Brian, sweet, caring Brian. He was an idiot for even believing he would do something like that.

He was just trying to get him to sleep.

Brian winked at him, and before he could react in any way, Marius clapped behind them, getting Jonny out of his stupor. “So. We are doing this,” the fake doctor announced.

The first mate muttered some words of acceptance, while the rest went back to their tasks. He heard Raphaella on the background, hitting the back of Marius’ head and saying something about being a traitorous bastard.

The crew of the Aurora had long since laid to sleep. Brian had, of course, ended on the middle, with Jonny on one side, per Brian’s insistence, and Tim on the other, because if there was going to be a fight, he wanted to be close enough to kick Jonny’s ass, and the first mate other side was taken by Nastya. Because of this, Ashes had settled besides Tim, to ‘prevent any escalation’.

That was perfectly fine for Jonny. He had his sister on one side, and what was basically a heater with lovely curls on the other. The whole of his crew was in the same room, where he could make sure they were safe. In other words, he should be able to sleep.

But he couldn’t. He had been laying on his back, looking at Aurora’s ceiling for hours now, and Jonny had no idea what was wrong.

He felt Nastya move to her back on his side. _Fuck_. If he had woken her up…

“Are you awake?” she asked him in a whisper.

Well, _she_ shouldn’t be. “No,” he lied. For that he got an elbow on his ribs, with him barely managing to muffle a _huff_ with his hand.

After a moment, he felt Nastya curl to his side. “’S like before”

Jonny hummed, knowing exactly what she meant. They used to do this on their early years, before Marius, or Tim even, before things got complicated with Carmilla. Sleeping together in a small cot Nastya had managed to make. Well, Jonny declaring he was going to sleep in the small cot Nastya had managed to make. But he knew she had enjoy it, no matter what she used to said.

“What, you in the same room as the rest?” Jonny tried to joke, and getting quite expectably another hit.

More than a huff, he had to contain a laugh this time to not wake the others. He waited until calming down before commenting. “Don’t know why we stopped.”

Nastya hummed. “Maybe…” she started, “maybe we should do that again. Sometime” she said while fidgeting with her sleeves.

The first mate also replied that with a hum. “I would like that”

They both managed to go to sleep after that, if a bit closer than they were before. The next morning, Jonny noticed the whole crew moving excitedly. It turned out that Ivy had found what she described as an ‘interesting system,’ Ygradiel, or something, and she could already feel a story coming together, she said, and they were all happy to finally move out of their corner in space.

The first mate took the new with a bit of skepticism, but was glad once he confirmed the Narrative wanted to get them there, and had let go of whatever it was its last course. There started to always be enough plates for everyone, and Aurora’s sensors did register the right amount of people.

Jonny wasn’t foolish enough to fully believe it was over. But for now, his crew was safe, and going to have some (hopefully violent) fun, and he had found a rare bottle of alcohol hidden in the vents

They would be fine.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you feel like leaving one, kudos and comments literally make my day. And if you're Schrijverr, hope this big pile of nonsense was of your liking :p


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